Why we volunteer

“You will never be completely at home again because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That’s the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing more people in more than one place”. -Miriam Adeney

Return dates are being discussed, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. It is no secret that I had a difficult time adjusting to life in Tabaka. But, if you know me, you must know that when I fall in love with something whether that is a person, a place, or a passion; I tend to fall very hard. So now I find myself stuck between two worlds that couldn’t be more different.

One of my fellow volunteers and I once discussed the cruelty of being a volunteer. Why do we put ourselves through this? As a long term volunteer we make a seemly conscious decision to abandon everything at home. We abandoned things such as the items that provide us comfort, our family, our security, and sometimes even our sanity. You are thrown into a foreign world and forced to navigate it. But then, once your reality has been completely derailed, you come out on the other side, finding that you have new comforts, new friends, and even a new outlook on life. The cruel part seems to be the timing in these events. Just as you get comfortable, yet again, you abandon everything and go back to your old life. You are forced to re-navigate a world you once knew, only this time with a little more insight as to how others live.

 

Everyone I work with knows I’m struggling as the days pass. They ask me all the time “why don’t you just extend your stay in Kenya?” I have seriously entertained that idea, but, I realize if I want to volunteer again (which I do), I need more experience and more education in my nursing practice. It will soon be time to pick up the pieces of my life I left behind. So yet again, I’m asking myself, why do we do this? The only answer I seem to have is for the experience, the insight and for the sick whose lives we are able to improve. We do what we do to help people, for them to help us, and for both parties to gain a little more perspective into each other’s lives. We do this to bridge the gaps of understanding, culture, and health care, in hopes of a more homogeneous world.

 

Although my world in the States differs in every way possible from Kenya, I love the Kenyan culture, the country and the people with all my heart. I’m coming to realize a part of my heart will always remain here, tucked away in this rural village I now call home.

 

 

Lake Victoria.

 

Western Kenya wouldn't be the same without

The smell of drying fish....

 

or kids with swollen bellies playing on fishing boats...

 

or children staring at my white skin.

 

My little friends.

 

 

My big friends.

 

Karen, Sonco, and Collons.

 

  

My favorite booger Tyson. 

 

Sponsor family.

They seem to like things that make noise.

 

Lawrence. My sponsor child.

Recently celebrated my birthday.

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An African birthday would not be complete

Without goat intestines. Yummy!